Most of us hate being left hanging.  And, we’re especially testy when it comes to surfing the ‘Net.  When we’re looking at websites, we want everything handed to us.  Whenever you go to a new website, there’s a certain “learning curve” that you need to work through.  You’ll end up with questions like:

1. Am I in the right place?
2. Will this website give me information or tools that I need?
3. How do I find my way around this site?
4. How fast can I find what I want?

There are a number of things you can do to address those questions.  In this post, I’m going to talk about a couple of the more common issues I see on real estate web sites that really leave an Internet visitor hanging.

Am I in the Right Place?

One of the most obvious problems I see with many real estate websites is this: there is absolutely no indication of a target market.  I land on the website, and I’m not sure if the web owner is serving buyers and sellers in Alaska or Maine.

Don’t leave your website visitor hanging.  Add an obvious indication of your market area in the header on your site or at the very top of the page.  A simple statement like “Atlanta Real Estate” will assure your visitor they’re on the right track.

How Do I Find My Way Around This Site?

This is a question your visitors should not have to ask themselves.  Or, if they do, they should find the answer right away.  One of the more common ways you may be keeping your website visitors off balance is to make them work for every piece of direction or critical piece of information.

Don’t leave your website visitor hanging.   First, what is more critical (hopefully to your visitors and certainly to you!) than an easy way to contact you?   Make sure your telephone number and a way to send an email is very visible.  We usually create a “contact image” that we put at the top of each page.  This image contains the web owner’s telephone number, and an email form is just a click away.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to find a telephone number on a real estate website and came up empty.

Secondly, don’t make your visitors poke around trying to find things on your website!  For example:

• If you write “Contact us”, put your phone number in there!  It should be something like “Contact us at 555-555-555″.  Can your visitor find your phone number at the top of your pages?  They should be able to, but why make them look??
• If you direct visitors to anything on your website, include a link that will take your visitor there!  I hate it when I see something like “Find more information on our FAQ page”.  What do they think – I’m a mind reader?  Am I going to take the time to figure out how to get to the FAQ page?  I don’t think so.

Besides making navigation easy for your visitors, you need to add links to other pages on your website for SEO purposes.  Your “internal linking structure” is one of the ways that the search engines figure out what your site is about.

So, if you are going to refer a visitor to your FAQ page, make sure you use the appropriate anchor text to get them there. 

DON’T:  For more information visit our FAQ page.

DO:  For more detail, visit our Atlanta Short Sale information page.

Are you keeping your real estate website visitors hanging?  If so, shame on you!  Go fix that – right now!

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